Lost in the labyrinth of Venice
Zito Madu explores what it means to exist in "The Minotaur at Calla Lanza"
The city of Venice is built on hundreds of little Islands in the Adriatic Sea and, if climate change continues at its current pace, the Italian city will someday cease to exist. The city’s blue water will swallow it. Maybe, somehow, someway, it will avoid the fate of Atlantis, and continue to float and enchant the world with its canals, blue water and romantic architecture. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see some sort of magic keep Venice above rising tides. It’s that kind of place.
After all, the supernatural resides in Venice. It has mystical powers that make it unreachable to those of us who have seen its beauty in photos and movies. It seems like a dream. The City of Bridges has inspired the likes of Shakespeare (Othello, The Merchant of Venice), Thomas Mann (Death in Venice), Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), Federico Fellini (Casanova), and Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now). Zito Madu has added his name to the list of artists who have fallen under the city’s spell.
Madu writes about Venice in The Minotaur at Calla Lanza, which is part travelogue, part memoir and part magical realism journey into the center of his humanity.
Madu enters the city during COVID and finds a once bustling tourist city nearly empty save its ghosts. He’s there for a fellowship, but instead finds himself working through his family's immigration from Nigeria to Detroit and his troubled relationship with his father as he wanders the city in contemplation. The tentacles of he story reach out from Venice and shift into something more. While Madu inhabits a nearlyt empty tourist city, he also has to make sure his parents are ok back home, which brings him to examine how he ended up in Italy and grappling with the maze of life and he obstacles that stand in our way, including, ourselves.
Madu is a writer in Brooklyn, New York.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
I want to know when you decided to write this book because it doesn't feel like when you're in Italy that this is the project you want to work on.
When I was doing the residency in Italy, most of the time I just spent it walking around drinking wine. You can see the stuff that I was doing and thinking about: life and all of that. But I was also so involved in taking care of my parents. I was working at the same time and then helping them when they were still teaching online. So there wasn't too much time for writing. I was more existing in that space. And then, I think it was afterwards, when I got back is when the publisher from Belt Publishing emailed me and asked me if I was interested in writing a book. I was like, oh, actually there's a very particular experience that I just had that I could sort of see. You've seen it in the book. It's so much of what I'm thinking about in the time that I'm walking around the city. I told her about the idea for the book — that chapter towards the end — what is circled around — the Labyrinth and the Minotaur — and she was like, ‘yeah, that's strange, but okay, let's see if you can pull it off.’ Then I sent it in and she was like, ‘oh, you actually managed to pull it off, so congratulations.’
I like the idea that a publisher is like, yeah, ‘do that weird thing you want to do.’ You could have made this a straightforward travelog of somebody finding something out about themselves, but there are elements of magic throughout the book. So it has that element and it does seem like you had a lot of faith in that element and that part of your life, but also a publisher was like, yeah, let's do that, which is the opposite of what people do today. Everybody wants a surefire thing.
I think that's the benefit of working with an indie publisher. She had already read some of my work and knew my personal essays and whatnot. So I think my personal essays, even my sports stuff, has a specific style, but when I was writing about Venice or writing about being a Venice, I had set the stage of the whole Labyrinthine experience and this whole being at this place in this very strange time. That place has never existed like this. I think that gave a lot of room to write it in that way. I don't have to explain why this place or this guy are not here anymore and give you 10 pages of exposition about it. It is just, I used to see this guy and he gave me my first slice of piece in Venice and then I never see him again because at the time everything's closing down, people are leaving the city, et cetera.
That is a really nice thing about a book like this. You don't waste my time. I do find books, especially travel books, can waste a lot of time on, here is why this is important. You actually never tell us why anything is important, which is refreshing.
We all lived through that time. You understand what happened. Also, I think sort of the stuff that I write tends to be in motion. Throughout the book you're just with me. When you experience things in the world, you experience them of like, okay, I've met this person that I talked to at this hotel bar for 30 minutes and then we went our separate ways. You don't experience them of like, all right, I'm going to explain every single thing about this person and then maybe what they've done before, what they've blah, blah, blah. You understand the context by the fact that I'm moving through and observing stuff, not me explaining to show how, I think, the way a writer is trying to show you how intelligent and knowledgeable they are. I think that sometimes kills the motion and the of energy.
I am a believer in people moving. I want to see somebody moving And that is a really important part here. Did you think a lot about that moving a camera around almost?
I think some people have referred to it as cinematic sometimes.
There's a chapter in the book that talks about the body and why the body has been so important to me, but it is this idea. I think a lot of writers go the opposite way, that at the end of the day, I'm still a physical person where I move through the world a very particular way.
Human beings are physical creatures that are moving through the world and you're doing stuff. So I think it wouldn't work in my writing if I just ignored the fact that there's a body that's doing things and it's interacting with other human beings. I think that's where I always start: all right, I'm in Venice and I think the first chapter is about me setting my feet in Venice and then going, this is a place like anywhere else in the world. But it's that physical act of landing someplace and going like, all right, this is a real place, this place that I've read about and seen movies about and all of this that seems very fantastical is a very real place.
But, yeah, I think the very writer thing to do is live in your head and write a whole thing about what you think. But I think the sort of physical experience that I was having was also important: sitting somewhere late at night with a Senegalese immigrant, or sitting talking to the guy who owned a pizza store, walking around Venice with my friend who's a professor. Those physical experiences are important and, even probably, a little bit more important than what I'm thinking at the time.
In the opening you are lost when you arrive and don’t have the use of a cell phone and you don't have to explain that. You land, you're like, I can't get on the wifi. How do I get where I thought I was going to go? Those are all, I think, actually more relatable than to what are you thinking about because all you're thinking about is how do I get where I need to go? It's not that complicated in that moment and when people write a lot, you're like, no, actually I think you're just worried about getting to the place you need to be with your bags.
And there's a little bit of frustration in the relationship with technology that you get so used to being able to use Google Maps or your cell phone and the minute you land in an unfamiliar place and it's not working, it's just like, holy shit, what am I going to do here? And so I'm on the bus connecting to wifi to a hotel whenever we're close and trying to look up stuff. Even trying to get to the Airbnb with my bags and the frustration of not knowing where you're going, but also carrying something that's heavy. At certain points, I think there's always a time where you just want to quit. Fuck it, I've just given up. But you can't really quit. You got to keep going.
The other part was the emptiness of Venice, we have a fantastical idea of Venice and it always looks so busy, but the Venice you experience is so far and away from that. So how did you wrap your head around trying to explain that?
I think it was so impossible to explain because one of my friends, the professor, he kept saying it, and I think it's in the book, “you're in a fantastical time, Venice is not like this. Even in the wintertime, Venice is not like this. You're basically in Venice at a time where there's no visitors, which really shows you that there's not that many people who actually live in a city.” There's a lot of people who own property in Venice, but you're talking about, what was it, 5,000 to 10,000 people who are actively there all the time and they tend to be older people— the young ones have left.
I went back to Venice in April and I hung out with a lot of younger people — a lot of my younger artist friends — and going to the places that I went before and it was packed. Even when I went to the glassblower's house or his workshop, there were so many people outside or waiting and I was like, “this feels more fantastical than the one that I experienced where there was no one there.” The fact that a place is stretched to the edges all the time with people is bizarre, an absurd thing, but I think because it's so normal that a lot of people visiting those times, they forget how absurd it is to live in a place or be walking in a place where you have to turn sideways just to walk down the street. I think I was having a sort of the opposite experience because my Venice is the one that was empty.
One of the interesting things is you have specific points where you point out this is different, this is strange for this place, but you don't meander on it because it is, but you’re also not trying to explain it and I wonder if it would've made sense if you even tried because it would taken up too much time and space.
I think I would've taken up too much time and space and I would've spent a lot of time bringing in the other Venice into it, right? When you're trying to explain it, you have to do it by contrast and it would dance — set the book to be Venice versus Venice where this is what Venice usually is and this is what Venice is now. I can just be like, no, this is the Venice that I experienced. I think the way that I was writing it is if this is a very fantastical thing and I'm going to write it as I'm experiencing it, as I'm going through it and then set the stage for the transformation. It's writing as this is the only Venice that I know because, in a way, I was writing it for myself. If you're writing it as a travelog, you have to show people Venice is different in this way. I'm just like, no, this is my Venice. So the strangeness is if you've been to Venice before you notice that it's an entirely different place, but if you've never been to Venice, then it's almost like a Venice out of time. It exists, but it doesn't really exist and you probably would never see it.
How does this differ from what you used to do for SB Nation and other stuff? Did you feel kind of relieved that you weren't asked to write a soccer book or a sports book?
In a way, yes. But it is funny because when I first started writing for SB Nation, the editor had messaged me and asked me if I wanted to write for them. I think it was like 2013 or 2012 when I first started freelancing. I had said “no” to them several times. I was like, writing about sports is the nerdiest fucking thing. I had written fiction. I wrote my own stories before that and I used to contribute to a bunch of blogs, short stories and whatnot. The editor was like, “well, it is just you writing your regular things, but using sports as the prism to explore all the things that you're really interested in.” And I think it showed up in a lot of my sports work. I'm writing about athletes, profiles of athletes or just writing about things that I think are interesting in the game, more than being entrenched in a conversation of this is who wins, this is what they need to do to win better, blah blah, blah.
I wrote that huge piece that people still love. It was a season preview for the Premier League. I remember I was traveling and the editor hit me up and he asked if I had something to contribute to the season preview, and I was like, oh no. I had done something a year before and I didn't want to do one this season: This is the state of the game, blah, blah, blah. And I remember I came back to him a week later and I was like, “who's the highest paid player in the Premier League at the time?” And it was like Paul Pogba, but he was making £300,000 a week or £350,000. I told him that I wanted to do 38 vignettes about what I would do if I made Paul Pogba’s money, which is this very surreal exercise about how having that amount of money would just destroy a person like me. And it really is the most ridiculous thing that I've probably ever written about sports and people are just like, yeah, this is great.
This book take us somewhere and you kind of have these expectations of where it's going and then you turn it on its head three quarters of the way through. You're like, “I don't want to do this anymore, let me throw in this moment of uncertainty at you.” As a reader you’re aware we're going somewhere different. Why does that interest you?
Well, I think writing something that is expected or linear in that way is fine. It's fun, but it's also just not the way that I experience the world. I think the people who've read it a couple of time recognize that from the start it is already kind of setting it up. I talk about the labyrinth early on. I'm talking about sort of judges of the underworld, all of these things early on. It's not even hints that I'm dropping, it's just more like, you're going on a journey and you sort of are going on a very particular journey. But I think the sort of thing that I was also setting up was the possibility of chance in a labyrinth, or even in memory, or just life in general, but especially in a sort of labyrinthine existence is like when you're lost, you turn a corner and you sometimes expect something and then you realize that you're in a completely different place.
I think getting lost in Venice is particularly that kind of feeling because a lot of things start to look similar, but you're just like, okay, I feel like I know where I'm at and you turn around and you're like, I have no fucking idea where I'm at. Especially in a time where there's not that many people. When you're lost with a bunch of people, you also feel a little bit of safety, but when you're by yourself, you're turning corners and you have no idea if you turn a corner and it's a dead end.
I think it was sort of setting it up in that way of, alright, in this fantastical time, in this labyrinth place, part of the existence of this place is that you can end up in a completely different world. This is a place that I'm experiencing that's outside of time in a sense.
I also think there's a particular part that is probably a little bit scarier than the transformation, which is when I was walking and I turned the corner and there was the military guy with the gun just standing there. I'm isolated with him. You see at the beginning of the book, there was that tension that I had about crossing the street and being a very visible black person. Then, suddenly, it's this sort of mirror image where I'm left alone with this guy and very vulnerable and it's in the dark and there's no one else around. It's the thing I've tried so hard to avoid and it’s happened suddenly because I'm walking and I'm lost. I think that's a mirror image of the transformation: of being lost and suddenly finding yourself in this very traumatic situation.
Before writing the book and before you're even in Venice, are you obsessed with labyrinths and the Minotaur? You have a grasp of classics, as they’re called. You reference certain writers and I can follow what you're reading and it’s interesting and not stuff that people are talking about. You're definitely reading older work, which I think is good. I think we've lost touch with a lot of that, and aren’t having enough discussions with some of those writers. So who are you discussing and talking to when you're writing this book? You're not talking to a reader and I think that's the important thing.
No, I'm not talking to a reader. I think I'm sort of talking to my interests in a way.
It is actually funny because the Minotaur thing, I think when a lot of people read it, they sort of think of the most immediate Minotaur associations with it. The [Jorge Luis] Borges one
is in there, the Gardner of Forking Paths that I go to visit. There's the one about [Joseph] Brodsky because Brodsky also wrote about Venice. It was his favorite city. And when I was saying that I wanted to write the book and I told my friend, the professor about it, he started laughing. He was like, “have you read Watermark by Brodsky?” And I was like, “no.” And so we sat there, he brought it to me the next day and we read it and there's a very particular place where he writes going in Venice is being a Minotaur in the Labyrinth.
So he was like, “it's funny that you are making this association without ever reading this book.It was Venice sort of is letting you know that it's labyrinth all the time.”
There are all these writings that describe it in very similar ways. So I think it was a little bit of me writing into my interests, writing to these people and writing to myself because that's just how I was perceiving the world at the time. When I'm in a line in the airport, I'm thinking like, oh, this feels like walking in a line of judges at the underworld because I've been through i. But there was something very particular about how quiet and scared everyone was and how tense the situation is of the arbitrariness of these officers deciding whether or not you're going to pass, right? It's like, all right, you have the right passport. But sometimes, even if you have the right passport, they're just like, no, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's a pure powerlessness about what you could do about it.
So I was looking around at everyone and it's like, yeah, this feels like we're about to be judged for and whether or not we're going to be allowed into paradise or we're going to be sent back into hell.
These are the ways that I think about stuff and it's influenced by all the writers that I like and all the writers that I've dealt with.